New Month, New Theme!

We had a wonderful start to this week with our Star of the Week presentation before starting up a new month of fun.  Our topic this month is all about what we like to do, so we will be talking about sports we like to play and activities and games we enjoy as well.  The 'theme' is always the broad concept or umbrella which helps us keep ideas consistent over the course of the month.  While this month holds the Thanksgiving Holiday, we will be talking more about how much we enjoy history in order to address the history of the event to learn the words often associated with Thanksgiving like, "Pilgrim" and "American Indian."

As stated earlier, when the teacher in charge of the first activities of the week started us off, she talked about how much fun sports and games are to play with friends.  We looked at a few clues for various sports and played a bit of a guessing game together at opening circle.  For example, when we saw a football, the children had to name the ball and describe the game.  

Once we got to the sport of baseball we talked about the red stitches baseballs have on them and then passed out white circles for the children to decorate and create their own baseballs.  Some children stuck with the red stitch idea while others wanted a more rainbow affect.

Sports are not the only type of game our teachers wanted to share this week.  We adapted the game of Twister to the preschooler level and spun to have them move their feet or arms to the color given (we are not ready to be focusing on left and right yet).  

Learning the concept and expectations of this game -touch a color with one part of your body while you move another part to a different color- was enough for our little Pirates to handle this day.  We had a great time helping them learn how to play and will probably do it again this month to review and observe their progress.

After more sports, we played another type of game on a teacher's iPad.  This game was Tiggly Chef and the kids had a blast adding ingredients with him to create fun food products!  

This game shows addition problems while talking through the equation and modifying the numbers on the screen as they add items to the bowl.  Many teachers will be putting this game on their iPads and we will be focusing on other iPad games for the children next week in the blog post we are putting together about technology for our preschool.

Once our next teacher came in, we carried on our love of cooking with more culinary activities.  However, before we were able to begin our next cooking activity, the children needed to pause to focus on the letter of the day and practice learning the letters in their names.  We did this by reviewing letter V (for vase) and its sounds then we passed out sheets of paper with each child's name written on them.  

The children used Q-Tips to add a fun way to trace the letters of their name and review them one at a time with their teachers.  Please keep practicing your child's name with him/her.  

Sometimes, singing the letters in the same pattern helps them memorize the order of the letters that make up their names.  We are continuing to work on showing them the letters in their names and calling out each letter as we help many of our young pirates write their names.  This activity helps reinforce what we are working on this fall.





We read the book Pete's a Pizza next which is one of my personal favorites.  This book is about a child who gets angry when he can't go outside to play.  His father notices the bad mood and asks his son to help him make a pizza.  Little does his son know HE is about to become the pizza!

After hearing about pizza, we used our scientific senses to smell some ingredients to find the ones that remind us of pizza!  While we were looking for Oregano, (the pizza smell) we found Cinnamon, Lemon Zest and Garlic.  


To try this at home, sprinkle 'a few shakes' of some distinct herbs or spices into separate baggies then ask the children to smell them and describe what they smell to you.  One of the children thought the lemon smelled like toothpaste!

On Friday we talked about more sports and reviewed some of the clues we introduced earlier in the week.  Then, the children played with paint in the bag!  The preschoolers were given words that related to various sporting activities and practiced the sounds they started with while they waited their turns to 'draw' the first letter with paint.  To try this at home, fill a sandwich or gallon sized bag with a LITTLE bit of paint.  Then, the tape it to your table to make it easier to hold and allow the child to practice writing with his/her fingers.  This is a no mess activity that builds fine motor skills as well as language and reading skills too.

For our football math game, the children were given two parts of a football and needed to trade with the friends at their tables to match two parts of a football that had the same number of laces.  Once they found the correct laces, they put their football puzzle pieces together on their 'football field'.

We rotated stations after that working on making sun catchers (a fun craft that is something else many people like to create) while out in our hallway, some of our preschoolers re-enacted sporting events while they pretended to catch and throw to each other as well as act out other games like leap frog.  

We then asked some of the children what they wanted to pretend to be and found some to be cats, dogs, lions and football stars.

The sun catcher activity will come home next week when the teachers add ribbon to the glue and water color paint mixture the children created in the bottoms of muffin tins.  Check out this site or search for many ways to create sun catchers for your home out of glue and water color paint or even food coloring!

The best part of the day on Friday was making snow before we left to go home!  What fun the children had mixing together baking soda and shaving cream-that's it, really.  

If you are looking for a fun way to play in the snow this year while staying warm inside your home on a day when there is nothing falling from the sky, check this out!  It's simple and lasts a while and there is no clean up besides rinsing out the bowl and it off your hands!  

We poured the 'snow' everyone made at the tables into our sensory bin for them to play in next week.  When we are ready to get rid of it, we will add vinegar and watch it foam up and disintegrate!  Talk about fun stuff people like to do!

What's Coming Up?

This week we will be asking current preschoolers for spring tuition and opening up registration of afternoon preschool for new families.  If you know someone who is interested in our program, please share this blog as well as this link to our Pirate Pete Preschool Website.

Anyone who signs up for our afternoon mailing list will be getting an email from me next week with details and forms for afternoon preschool sign up.  We need copies of a child's birth certificate, immunization record, physical record and registration paperwork as well as the tuition in order to sign up for afternoon preschool.  **All we need from current preschoolers is the tuition for spring which is a one time fee of $200 (for the extended time preschool session) from 9:30-11:55 AM.  Afternoon preschool runs from 1:00-2:30 PM still on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and has a one time fee of $150.

We WILL HAVE PRESCHOOL on Monday, November 10th and will take the week of Thanksgiving (Nov. 24-28th) off.  See you tomorrow for more fun times!